I missed the fireworks last night as I turned in during the 3rd quarter and the Irish had wha I thought was a comfortable lead. Surprised this morning to learn what happened. Congratulations on the win. I think you will be happy with Coan as your quarterback.
Well, we ran in to a team that had all the intangibles going for them; a full stadium, Bobby Bowden tribute and then the McKenzie Milton "Rudy" moment. With that and with all due respect, I am going to attempt the JO'Co Game Report Card. QB: A Coan played very well under unexpected pressure RB: C Line did not give much to work with but not overly impressed WR:B I was beginning to wonder if they made the trip. Potential is there. TE: C Dropped a few. Not as dominant as I expected OL: D- Nobody got killed. That's about it. DL: C Out of gas by Q4. Got gashed most of the second half. LB: B Pretty solid in a crazy defensive scheme DB: C- Burned deep. Much better underneath. Seemed gassed at the end too. K: A Won the game. Kickoffs were pretty solid. P: C Good hang time. Not a lot of distance. Kelly: B- Didn't lose his cool. Almost went "full purple" after that terrible roughing non-call. Steady when they needed it the most. Freeman: D Wow! That defense was almost out of control a couple of times. He has a high octane game plan that can go off the rails at any moment. He flashed the "deer in the headlights" look a few times in the middle of the game. It looked like the personnel is neither conditioned well enough nor schooled well enough to play this jailbreak style yet. It will be a thrill a minute.
goat fluffers! very creative! Censors approve! On the non-call for the intentional grounding. I've seen it explained that since it wasn't called initially it can't be called in the review, but the fumble v incomplete pass could be. I can't blame the way the game went on the refs, I can blame it on that 3 man front that FSU gashed the whole second half and Freeman stubbornly refused to get out of and on the LB's who failed to fill the holes and the poor tackling. I can blame our AA TE for 2 horrible drops that hit him in the hands. I can blame the OL who I certainly hope will improve as the season goes on, they weren't awful in pass blocking but they were in run blocking. Cain Madden, aka Dump Truck, was less than great in his debut. Blake Fisher has a knee sprain, no word on his availability for Toledo. In his place Michael Carmody was schooled by the FSU DL. FSU did have a bit of luck as they had 3 reviews all of which went for them. When we were being aggressive on D, we chased the FSU QB all over the place just couldn't get him on the ground as much as we should have. Again though, a win is a win. The last Sunday night fight we were in at Texas ended differently. I'm glad for the win. A lot of improvement needs to happen though, I always read that the most improvement comes between the 1st and 2nd game. I hope that's true.
On Hamilton taking his helmet off, he was 10 yards out of bounds I thought it was only a penalty when you do it in the field of play. At least he didn't do the horns down sign!! We got points off that turnover so no harm.
On Kelly's lame attempt at channeling John McKay....a poor attempt at humor. You know it when you have to explain it to everybody. Kelly isn't good at that, he usually throws out some lame comments like that in his press conferences, he should stick to just talking football and not try to be cute.
From ESPN: And what about Notre Dame's defense? Notre Dame 41, Florida State 38 Generally speaking, Brian Kelly is more of a bend-don't-break guy. If Notre Dame's defense is going to be awesome in one category, it is going to be big-play prevention, and he's willing to sacrifice a little in the efficiency department to achieve it. But his recent Irish defenses have been a little more aggressive, and when he had to replace coordinator Clark Lea this offseason, he made a particularly aggressive choice: Cincinnati's Marcus Freeman. The Bearcats ranked fourth in success rate allowed last season, and while they occasionally got burned by a big play, it was worth it for all the three-and-outs they were forcing. In his first game as Notre Dame DC, Freeman's Irish lived up to the all-or-nothing billing for a while. Florida State scored touchdowns on plays of 89 and 60 yards, but Notre Dame built a 38-20 lead thanks to three three-and-outs and three interceptions. Isaiah Foskey (two sacks) was awesome, as was all-world safety Kyle Hamilton (two INTs). Justifiably, Freeman seemed to ease up on the pressure with the Irish up 18. That led to their near-downfall. Aiming to avoid handing FSU easy points, they instead allowed a 15-play, six-minute touchdown drive late in the third quarter and early in the fourth. It cut their lead to 38-28, but in the process it seemed to steal their legs. With the offense suddenly unable to move the ball, a tired and increasingly conservative Irish defense then fell victim to McKenzie Milton's late-game heroics. FSU drove 88 yards for a touchdown to cut the lead to three, then drove 46 yards to send the game to OT. Notre Dame somehow defied the script-writers to win in OT, but FSU ended up with 442 yards at 6.0 yards per play. That's the most yards and points they'd given up to someone other than Clemson in two full seasons. Is there a problem? I'm not convinced. The Irish didn't lose the plot until situational weirdness came around late in the game. They are still without five of last year's seven-or-so best play-makers, and that could catch up to them, but we'll give Freeman and this defense a pass for now. Overreactions, partial answers and more takeaways from college football's opening weekend
Speaking as someone who thinks he's funny but clearly is not - Ask my grandkids, whom I've told I can tell they're fake laughing (which makes them laugh for real) - I understand that Kelly flubbed the line. Hopefully, he learned his lesson and will spare us future poor attempts at humor.
Looking up the rules, it appears to me that if Hamilton had been on the ND sideline when he took his helmet off it wouldn't be a foul. The rule is not clear, the player is allowed to remove his helmet when he is in "the team area" but it doesn't specify his team area.
First thing I thought when 14 took off his helmet: he's on the FSU sideline, so he's getting the flag. Although the rule doesn't expressly say it, they are treating it like taunting I'd guess.
Shayne Simon and Blake Fisher having MRI's this afternoon. Paul Mola tore his Achilles, done for the year. He tore the other one last year. Kevin Bauman broke his leg and will have surgery, out for at least 6 weeks. He had a good camp, but we are deep at TE. Prince Kollie the highly rated freshman lb will be in the rotation now that Simon appears out for Toledo. When asked about C'Bo, Botelho and Diggs, Kelly said it's week to week with no explanation. Said Hamilton came over after the helmet incident and apologized to him.
It was certainly a talked about game, many said it was the best game of the weekend. I don't know about that, but as Don said it was the only game, but even so it was the 2nd best in the 29 years of Labor Day Sunday games so there is that, but they didn't say who was the best. Oddly enough the talk on ND boards is pretty negative about the game and how the team performed. ESPN released the numbers for Sunday’s game and they are monstrous. With 7.1 million average viewers, the game was the second-most viewed Labor Day Sunday game in over 25 years. And that isn’t even taking into account the out-of-home data, which isn’t available yet. The stats showed a 29-percent increase from the last Labor Day Sunday game from 2019 between Oklahoma and Houston. At its peak, 8.8 million people were watching the game.